A certain fragrance

Posted 6/26/19

She wanted a writing lesson. “How do I write great description?”

“Never forget the sense of smell,” I told her, adding that just a trace of a fragrance awakens memories long asleep. …

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A certain fragrance

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She wanted a writing lesson. “How do I write great description?”
“Never forget the sense of smell,” I told her, adding that just a trace of a fragrance awakens memories long asleep.
Sometimes on summer evenings I walk a nearby trail about suppertime. I catch kitchen fragrances riding the air. Fried chicken turns me into a 12-year-old boy ready to ditch his bike and rush inside to dine like a southern prince.
What joys those meals were but how these walks through others’ kitchens hurt. A homesick feeling takes over. My boyhood days of coming in from Georgia woods to smell a home-cooked meal are forever gone.
Well, at least flowers keep on keeping on.
A few days back I posted photographs of gardenias on Facebook. 47 women commented, only 2 men. Women understand the power of a fragrance.
One woman phrased it in a beautiful way. The first time this explorer-artist woman met this insightful but bold man he told her, “You smell just like a woman is supposed to smell.”
“I never forgot it,” she said. “It was one of the better compliments I’ve ever received.” She added this. “I have loved flowers all my life and they love me. I wear the scent.”
I knew a woman who wore the scent of flowers, albeit perfume. “You smell like fresh-cut flowers,” I told her. Told her more than once. It pleased her. She told me the name of her perfume but I’ve long forgotten it, perchance Norell.
What mattered was how this young woman would walk into a room and fill it with floral hints and bouquets, a redolence of air swirling around gardenia corsages.
Fragrances hold memories. Drying laundry, sweetened by fabric softener, resurrects memories of growing up. That clean smell reminds me of home’s comforts.
Fragrances hold youth. When I inhale the lemony celery-like fragrance of mown grass, I am running beneath Friday night lights.
Memory and fragrance intertwine like some love-struck honeysuckle clutching his tea olive.
A woman walks by, and her perfume breathes new life into a memory. I see people who are gone from this flower-perfumed world.
There’s a down side to fragrances. To me all funeral homes smell the same. Flowers, parlor room mold, and old upholstery wrap me in heavy air and heavy memories.
When a certain fragrance co-occurs with one of life’s key moments you never forget it.
Columbia native Kary B. Mullis received the Nobel Prize for inventing the polymerase chain reaction, a quick way to copy DNA billions of times. In his Nobel lecture, he recalled working out the details. “I was driving up a long and winding road in Mendocino County, California heading for my weekend cabin ... the California buckeyes poked heavy blossoms out into Highway 128. The pink and white stalks hanging down into my headlights looked cold, but they were loaded with warmed oils that dominated the dimension of smell. It seemed to be the night of the buckeyes, but something else was stirring.”
Something else, indeed.
“Never forget the sense of smell.” Good advice for writers who want to convey emotions and a time machine for those who making an emotional trip to the past.
And the only ticket required? Just a trace of a certain fragrance. That’s all.

down south, tom poland, fragrance

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